Quotes by Edith Wharton

About Edith Wharton:

Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.

Edith Wharton

An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

Edith Wharton

But is happened, you know. Bear that in mind. Nothing you can do will change it. Time and again, I've found that a good thing to remember.

Edith Wharton

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Edith Wharton

My little dog—a heartbeat at my feet.

Edith Wharton

Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.

Edith Wharton

...the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at them both as opportunitie...

Edith Wharton

The visible world is a daily miracle, for those who have eyes and ears.

Edith Wharton

If I could have made the change sooner I daresay I should never have given a thought to the literary delights of Paris or London; for life in the country is the only state which has always completely satisfied me, and I had never been allowed to grat...

Edith Wharton

The true felicity of a lover of books is the luxurious turning of page by page, the surrender, not meanly abject, but deliberate and cautious, with your wits about you, as you deliver yourself into the keeping of the book. This I call reading.

Edith Wharton

One of the great things about travel is you find out how many good, kind people there are.

Edith Wharton

The fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done.

Edith Wharton

It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.

Edith Wharton

To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.

Edith Wharton

My little dog - a heartbeat at my feet.

Edith Wharton

When people ask for time, it's always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn't take half as long to say.

Edith Wharton

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

Edith Wharton

Author Bio

  • NameEdith Wharton
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist, short story writer, designer
  • BornJanuary 24, 1862
  • DiedAugust 11, 1937
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • AwardsKnight Of The Legion Of Honour; National Women's Hall Of Fame